Geotour with the wild girls

Itinerary

• From Nagy-mező, we head west on the K▲ trail towards the Festetics Lookout Tower.
• On the southern side of Varsás Hill, we turn right onto the K trail.
• On Jókai Street, we turn left, switching to the S trail.
• We reach the Lakatos Hill viewpoint via an unmarked path.
• We take a right on the PΩ trail for a detour to the Vadlány Cave.
• Returning from the hill, we follow the S trail again.
• Turning left on the K trail, we return to Nagy-mező.

Detailed description of the route

Up to the Festetics Lookout Tower

Nagy-mező, located at the junction of the main hiking trails in the area, is one of the most popular excursion sites near Keszthely. Thanks to the relatively large grassy area and good infrastructure, several community programs are organized here (such as the Bud Break – a spring welcoming outdoor family event). From Nagy-mező, we head west on the K▲ trail towards the Festetics Lookout Tower. (If you want an easier path to the tower, you can choose the southwest-bound K trail, then the K▲ trail.) The rocky, steep path takes us through one of the region's characteristic plant communities, the Mediterranean buckthorn – downy oak shrub forest. This plant community covers significant areas in the Keszthely Mountains, often interspersed with dolomite dry steppes and open dolomite rocky grasslands and is rich in protected and highly protected species important from a biogeographical perspective. Occasionally, the roots of trees growing in the shallow rendzina soil are beautifully exposed.

We arrive at the top of Varsás Hill among tall black pines giving a Mediterranean atmosphere. Turning right, the Festetics Lookout Tower, erected in 2000 by the Balaton Uplands Forestry Co., rises a few meters beside us. From its top, we can observe the southern part of the mountain range, carved by deep valleys, where the traces of black pine forest dieback from 2011-2012 are clearly visible. The view extends to the flat plateau of Görbe Hill, crowned by the red-white tower of the former military radio station. To the east, the Berzsenyi Lookout Tower on Pető Hill stands, then after the white dolomite quarry south of Nagy-mező, Lake Balaton appears with Vonyarcvashegy and Gyenesdiás on its shore. Behind the southern shore, the hills of Outer Somogy and the mouth of the Zala River are visible. Before your gaze reaches the Keszthely pier, the new Ujdvari TV tower near Nagykanizsa interrupts the outline of the Zala Hills. North of Keszthely are Cserszegtomaj and the dolomite quarries above it, Rezi Hill, and Meleg Hill hiding the Rezi castle. On the near side of the Vár Valley are Sátor Magasa, before it the Négyzögű Hill, then Kis- and Nagy-messzelátó Hills, and Szék Hill closing the panorama.

Dolomite from A to Z

From the lookout tower, we continue right on the K▲ trail and then switch to the right branch of the K trail crossing the southern side of the hill. We pass by Varsás, located on the right side of the road, whose name comes from the Turkish period when high water levels still caused local fishermen to trap fish in the area.

After a short walk, we arrive at the former "Zalavári" dolomite quarry carved into Pipa Hill. The main mass of the Keszthely Mountains is formed by the Main Dolomite Formation and the approximately 10 million years younger Rezi Dolomite Formation. About 210 million years ago, their area was part of the Alps and situated in a bay of the Tethys Ocean on today's African continent. The shallow, hot tropical sea was a highly favorable habitat for various calcareous algae species that secreted vast masses of calcium carbonate, creating vast, very shallow carbonate platforms. With the climate drying, dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) instead of limestone began to precipitate from increasingly concentrated seawater, incorporating magnesium ions into the rock, resulting in its brittleness. Later, tectonic movements fragmented the carbonate platform, turning the area into an isolated basin where nutrient-rich sea currents rarely arrived. In this strongly oxygen-poor environment, well-layered, gray dolomite formed. Only anaerobic bacteria could survive these harsh conditions, reducing organic matter to hydrogen sulfide. Because of this, the freshly broken surfaces of these rocks emit a strong bitumen smell.

A wide road leads to the east side of the Pipa Hill quarry yard. Entering here, the quarry wall unfolds in front of us among black pines. The nearly white and darker gray layers that overlay each other are clearly distinguishable. It is also notable that while the northern wall's layers are almost horizontal, those of the eastern wall tilt toward the north. This tilting is due to tectonic movements after formation, which broke and fragmented the rock, significantly facilitating its extraction. The quarries opened in the 1960s were worked until the 1990s but were moved to the northern part of the mountain range for environmental reasons. After their closure, leveraging the good acoustics of the quarry yard, the owner Gyenesdiási Noble Forest Owner Association intended to develop a wellness hotel (Opera Hotel) with 350 rooms, a water park, and an adventure park in the 2000s with a $75 million investment.

Passing through the area, we reach the built-up area of the large village. At the corner of Jókai Street, we turn left from the K trail to the S trail. When the houses run out on the right side at the base of a small dolomite wall, the Tücsök Hill caves hide behind trees, formerly used locally as inhabited caves and cellars.

Remains of the Pannon Lake

Our trail soon turns right and, bypassing another quarry yard, starts to ascend. On the eroded road embankment, we encounter several protected plant species. Among the most common is the blonde lion's tooth (Leontodon), whose largest population in Hungary is found in the Keszthely Mountains (besides the Southern Bakony and the Sopron Mountains). It is easily recognizable by its yellow composite flowers and velvet-like grayish-green basal rosettes covered with tiny star hairs.

Along the way, we also pass two rock outcrops resembling concrete blocks, remnants of the former shoreline of the Pannon Lake that waved here in the middle Miocene. About 15 million years ago, this area was flooded by a Paratethys branch stretching from today's Rhône Valley to the Caspian Sea, from which the later Pannon Lake gradually became fresh; about 8 million years ago, river delta deposits filling the lake reached the current Balaton area. Throughout its long life, the Keszthely Mountains rose as an island within it, but several bays extended onto its area, where wave and coastal currents carried out significant erosional activity called abrasion. This process rounded Triassic rock material washed from the shore into smooth flat abrasion gravel and created abrasion shelves on the mountain edge depending on water levels.

You can observe this when taking a short detour to the abandoned quarry on Lakatos Hill clearing. It is forbidden and extremely dangerous to go to the nearly vertical quarry wall edge due to the developed fracture network crossing the rock – but the view makes the short detour worthwhile. Looking northward, the Festetics and Berzsenyi lookouts reveal themselves in the distance. Below, the spacious quarry yard reforested with black pine yawns, at its northwest end showing spectacular and developed erosional forms. The abrasion shelf is found eastward on the white dolomite wall, topped by a nearly horizontal yellow rock layer (Pannon sediment).

In areas with weak currents or where fallen rocks were quickly covered by sediment in the water, the eroded shore rock set in angular gravel form embedded into the breccia layers of the stratigraphic sequence. One especially beautiful remnant of this can be seen at Vadlány Cave, reached by following the S trail and turning right after 200 m on the PΩ trail. Here we climb a small hill hiding the cave, where numerous protected sub-Mediterranean (e.g., Daphne gnidium) and Pannon endemic (e.g., Festuca pallens, Hungarian gurgolya) plant species also grow.

The Vadlány Cave

A steep path leads down from the top of the rock to the cave. The stratigraphic sequence enclosing Vadlány Cave (Diás Formation) is of abrasion breccia origin. The rubble layers were later traversed by thermal waters, showing their former presence with thick red layers and small to large spherical cavities. The cave's formation is not simple, as its upper layers, cemented probably by waters containing dissolved lime, protect the underlying layers which are much more susceptible to erosion and deflation and thus erode faster. The former sometimes fall off in smaller or larger circular sections, as observed on-site. Reconstruction of the cave's original form is complicated because the cavity has long been known among the local population. Its floor level is higher than its surroundings, and its size and position are ideal, so it might have been used as a habitation cave in the past. Its present black pine-reforested environment is misleading. At the beginning of the 20th century, the then treeless eroded hill was still grazed by goats, and a clandestine distillery operated in the cave. Based on the above, the original smaller cavity was not carved by the wave action of the Pannon Lake but most likely by dissolution activities of thermal waters and wind erosion, later enlarged by human hands to its current size.

The vadlány (wild girls) are mythical beings, usually young maidens who hid in the woods due to lovesickness. According to one version of the legend, they lived in the mountain range like other wild animals. They fed on berries, mushrooms, moss, and bird eggs gathered from the wild, sheltered in hollow trees or rock crevices, warmed themselves on the Pad-kű rocks in good weather, and lured fishermen from the Szerelem Hill. They walked barefoot, their long hair covering their breasts, and their only clothing was a kerchief tied around their waists. They roamed the meadows and groves all day, singing their songs far and wide. Anyone who followed their tracks was lured away with them.

Returning from the hill to the S trail and passing the uppermost houses, we reach an intersection at a bend where we continue straight. (Turning right and following the path leads to an 800 m detour to the Gyenesdiás Light Cross.) In the valley called Tüskés-lap, we walk north without particular excitement. Reaching the K trail, we turn left and return to Nagy-mező along the forest gym course route after half a kilometer.